MD Anderson relocating Smithville research park to Houston

1of4The design of the TMC3 from Boston-based Elkus Manfredi Architects takes a previous idea to create a double-helix-shaped building and creates park space shaped like a DNA strand.Photo: Courtesy of TMC

2of4The Texas Medical Center along with the Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center announced plans to build a research and innovation campus on land just south of S. Braeswood Boulevard and north of Old Spanish Trail, on Monday, April 23, 2018, in Houston. This view of the site, which is currently a parking lot, is from M.D. Anderson’s south campus.Photo: Mark Mulligan, Houston Chronicle / Houston Chronicle

MD Anderson Cancer Center will relocate its nearly 50-year-old research facility near Austin to Houston, a decision that’s upset business and political leaders in the central Texas area.

Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape has gone so far as to try to enlist Gov. Greg Abbott’s influence to convince MD Anderson to keep its Science Park in Smithville, site of Jim Allison’s earliest immune system research that last year culminated in the Nobel Prize.

“We need your help in saving an institution that is vital to Bastrop County,” Pape wrote Abbott in a letter, dated May 14. “Considerations are pending that might move this department to Houston. Please don’t let that happen.”

MD Anderson officials Friday met with employees to provide more specifics on the plan, which calls for the park to be shut down in two years. They said the decision is already final.

The officials said the Science Park will be integrated into MD Anderson’s south campus, where the system has built six new research buildings in the last 15 years and will build another as part of the touted TMC3 initiative, which will unite the cancer center, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the Texas A&M University Health Science Center on 30 acres of Texas Medical Center land.

In an email, MD Anderson President Dr. Peter Pisters said the decision was made now because the Smithville facilities “are at the end of their lifespan” and necessary renovations would cost more than $100 million. MD Anderson’s investment in TMC3 is expected to cost at least that much.

Abbott’s office did not respond to Chronicle inquiries about Pape’s letter. The governor has been a vocal supporter of the TMC3 campus, the linchpin of a plan to make Houston more of an international hub of biomedical innovation. The 3 in TMC3 is to identify Houston as the “Third Coast” for life sciences.

In the letter, Pape emphasized “the huge loss for our local economy should the center be moved to Houston” — with 175 employees, it is one of Bastrop County’s largest employers. In an interview, Pape added that the scientists’ salaries are higher than average in the area, “expendable income that benefits the community.”

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Pape said that many of the scientists there say they will retire before moving to Houston, a testament to its bucolic, serene setting that he compared to “a resort where scientists can do their work and live a few minutes away.” Allison has spoken often about that appeal, which he loved so much that he hesitated in the 1980s before accepting a new job at the University of California at Berkeley.

Allison could not be reached for comment about the decision to close the park.

The park, established by the Texas Legislature in 1972, opened in 1977 on land acquired from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Formally dedicated as a research center for the study of cancer’s causes and prevention, it has an annual operating budget of $13 million. Its scientists last year brought in nearly $15 million in federal and state grants.

Allison’s research at Smithville defined the basic structure of immune cells, work that informed his ultimate identification of a brake that reins in the immune system and development of a drug to unleash it to attack cancer. The breakthrough breathed new life into immunotherapy, now the fourth pillar of cancer treatment.

Scientists there also discovered that cells treated with a specific chemical carcinogen from cigarettes caused DNA damage at specific sites commonly mutated in lung cancer, a key finding into the critical link between smoking and the disease.

Moving the Smithville park to the medical center has been under consideration for some time, Pisters said in the email. He said the decision followed “an in-depth analysis of our mission, how modern science is conducted, the facilities and financial considerations.” He called it a mission-based, strategic decision “designed to accelerate research synergies.”

The Bastrop County Chamber of Commerce and the county’s office of tourism and economic development are also working with Pape to persuade MD Anderson to reverse its decision.

“I’m still optimistic,” said Pape. “I think the governor is a reasonable person and astute enough to know you don’t put the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Oilers in the same stadium. Strengthen any part of Texas and you strengthen all of Texas. Weaken any part of Texas and you weaken all of Texas.”

But Pisters said in the email he doesn’t believe that any political influence could affect MD Anderson’s plans at this point. He said the institution is “working with stakeholders on both campuses as well as donors, community leaders and government officials.”

“In science, we are always mindful of history,” Pisters emailed in response to a question about any sentimentality in closing a center where key discoveries were made. “Our Science Park campus will be remembered as an important chapter in MD Anderson’s long and impressive story.”

Officials said there are no plans to relocate MD Anderson’s other research facility in Bastrop County, the Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research. Scientists there do research with primates and other large animals.

Todd Ackerman is a veteran reporter who has covered medicine for the Houston Chronicle since 2001. A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, he previously worked for the Raleigh News & Observer, the National Catholic Register, the Los Angeles Downtown News and the San Clemente Sun-Post.